ACTIVE TRIED NOT TO stare as he shook Fortune's hand. The lawyer was the first utterly hairless person he had ever seen. Nothing on the scalp, no mustache or beard, not even eyebrows or eyelashes. The only thing on his head was a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.
"A pleasure to meet you, Trooper Active," Fortune said with a wide grin, big ears jutting from the gleaming skull. Was he ill? No, his grip was strong. Perhaps the goblin look was part of his uniform, like the sand-colored suit he wore. Active didn't know clothes, but Fortune's outfit looked as if it cost as much as a snowmachine.
Active nodded at Jermain, who gave a tight jerk of his head and said nothing. The engineer stood behind Fortune as if for shelter. "I don't think I've ever seen a three-piece suit in Chukchi, Mr. Fortune."
"I'm afraid I didn't have time to run by Eddie Bauer before I left San Francisco," Fortune said with another smile.
"San Francisco?" Finally, Active remembered. "You're the Alex Fortune who defended Clayton Howell." GeoNord hadn't sent up a mere staff lawyer; Fortune was one of the highest-priced criminal defense attorneys on the West Coast.
"The same," Fortune said with a little bow. "GeoNord hires only the best. But speaking of the Howell affair, how is our mutual friend Captain Carnaby?"
"He's a sergeant now."
"So he is," Fortune said. "My mistake. How is Sergeant Carnaby these days?"
"He's fine."
"I'm glad to hear it," Fortune said. "I understand he's a good man. And of course it's always regrettable when bad things happen to good people."
"There's a lot of that going around."
"It's always a risk when someone . . . overreaches, however laudable his intentions." Fortune nodded at a chair on one side of Jermain's conference table. "Won't you sit?"
Active walked over and stood behind the chair. "After you." He stared at Fortune. Fortune stared back.
Jermain started to sit across from Active. He looked at Fortune and froze halfway down, then stood again.
Finally, Fortune smiled and sat down. So did Jermain, looking disgusted. Fortune opened a briefcase, took out a yellow legal pad and a gold ball-point pen, and laid them on the table.
Active sat, pulled out his Pearlcorder, clicked it on, and set it down in front of him. "Shall we start Mr. Jermain's statement now? Today is..."
Fortune held up a perfectly manicured hand and Active stopped. With the same hand, Fortune reached down and clicked off the recorder. He opened the little plastic door, removed the microcassette, and placed it on the table beside the recorder.
"There won't be any statement," Fortune said. "Not today. Probably not ever. Certainly not until you give us some reason why Mr. Jermain should say anything whatever. A partial identification, you said?"
The lawyer's confidence was unnerving, but of course lawyers like Alex Fortune were paid extremely well to look confident.
"That's not all."
"Not all?" Fortune looked from Active to Jermain and back again. Jermain looked at his hands.
"I've located another witness who says George Clinton and Aaron Stone were investigating an illegal leach field at the Gray Wolf when they were killed." Perhaps Emily Hoffman hadn't actually mentioned Aaron Stone or used the word "investigating" at the Dreamland last night. But it was close enough.
Jermain's head jerked up. He glanced from Active to Fortune. Fortune's bland smile didn't change. But when he reached for his gold ballpoint, Active noted with satisfaction, he missed and knocked it two inches to the left.
He picked it up and tapped it lightly on the yellow pad. "Would that be a partial ID or a full ID on the leach field, Trooper Active?" He looked down and wrote something with the ballpoint.
"I would characterize it as a sufficient ID, Mr. Fortune." Active mustered a smile of his own, hoping it approached the serene confidence radiating from Fortune. "Put the two witnesses together, and Mr. Jermain is the logical suspect. He obviously has the hunting skills to kill the two men." Active waved at the trophies staring down from the walls of Jermain's office.
Jermain looked at the heads. Fortune was still writing. His eyes didn't leave the yellow pad.
"Mr. Jermain's plane and his snowmachine give him the mobility that would have been needed to kill Aaron Stone at Katy Creek," Active said. "Because of the thaw last week, no one from Chukchi could have crossed the bay on the ice.
"And Mr. Jermain had the motive, to put it mildly. According to my witness, that leach field is the cause of the fish kills on the Nuliakuk. I would think keeping something like that secret would be absolutely crucial to the Gray Wolf's chief engineer." Active nodded at Jermain, then looked at Fortune. "Not to mention his employer."
He switched his gaze back to the engineer, who was now watching Fortune intently. "Murdering two people to cover up the willful poisoning of an important subsistence stream— I'd say a jury of aanas and caribou hunters and berry pickers is highly likely to grant Mr. Jermain here a lifetime of state hospitality at the Anvil Mountain Correctional Center."
Active stopped, feeling a mild optimism that faded in the long silence that ensued. Fortune continued writing for a time, then paused and looked up quizzically. Active realized the lawyer was waiting to see if he had finished. He tried to find something else to say, but couldn't.
At last Fortune laid his pen on the legal pad, his smile broader than ever and now somewhat incredulous. "That's your case? Fragmentary oral evidence, supposition, and hypothesis?"
Active met the lawyer's gaze for a moment, then looked down at the Pearlcorder on the table.
"You're wasting our time, Trooper Active." Fortune put the pen in his pocket, dropped the legal pad into his briefcase, and snapped it shut. "If you had real evidence for any of this nonsense, you'd be here with an arrest warrant instead of your little recorder."
The lawyer stood up and extended his hand. "Good day, now."
Active shook the hand and gazed into Fortune's eyes, where he saw something that looked like pity. Jermain just stared, wordless.
Numbly, Active put the Pearlcorder and cassette in his pocket, fumbled with his notebook, dropped it, picked it up, pocketed it too, and left the GeoNord offices. They had learned most of what he knew, plus all that he surmised, and he was leaving no smarter than when he arrived.